


Conclamo

by Trixen



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 05:39:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 12,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4694099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trixen/pseuds/Trixen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Buffy and Angel's daughter Perdita goes missing, it sends their lives into a tailspin that they cannot control. Buffy's past comes back to haunt them, in more ways than one. Whilst trying desperately to find her daughter, she travels further and further into the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles, and embarks on an affair with Wesley that threatens to change everything forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_The house seems  
to circle around you  
slowly. I circle around you, a wild  
animal near a fire. I remember  
I would kill for you._  
  
\- Sharon Olds “Portrait of a Daughter”  
  
  
The table in the police station feels like knotted ice beneath my finger tips. I trace the edges of the papers spread like fans, and feel their sides slice into my thumbs. A paper cut is such a small sting, but it feels like fire. I am glad for it, in a way. My stomach is floaty and unhinged and I feel as if it might come apart at any moment. I can taste the cornflakes I ate this morning. I can taste Angel’s sperm from last night. I went down on him and then we fell asleep.   
  
A police officer hands me some coffee. It smells like dirt. I stare at the bowels of the cup, its murkiness. It reminds me of the shimmering asphalt on hot days in LA. I take a sip. Its only polite.   
  
“Ms. Summers.”  
  
“Buffy.”  
  
The officer’s name is “Bob Arthur”. Two first names. “All right. Buffy. Tell me a little bit about your daughter.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
He gives me a quizzical glance. “It will help us to find her.”  
  
“Her name is Perdita.” I pause and smile. “I named her that because I love _101 Dalmatian_ s. You know that Disney movie?” I don’t wait for Bob Arthur to respond. “I love how they all come together to help each other. They’re lost but they don’t mind because they’re a family. I named my daughter Perdita after the Mother Dalmatian. A lot of people think I’m crazy. Even my husband. But I think it’s a really pretty name.”  
  
“Very pretty.”  
  
“She has dark hair and green eyes. Her two front teeth are missing. There’s a little scar on her right shoulder from when she fell and cut herself on a rock. Angel dressed her this morning.” Panic seizes my throat. “I don’t even remember what she was wearing.”  
  
“Your husband already told us,” he says gently.  
  
“What was she wearing?”  
  
He consults a sheet in front of him. “Pink pants and a red top with pink sneakers.”  
  
“That clashes. Why would he put that on her? Perdita didn’t even like those pink pants. They were a gift. From someone with bad taste. It must have been Willow.”   
  
“Ms. Summers…”  
  
“Buffy.”  
  
“Drink your coffee. I’m going to talk to your husband again.”  
  
My head lolls back a little. I look up at the ceiling. A few red blotches adorn the white paint. It looks like blood, but I can’t tell. I remember telling Perdita once that her blood was actually blue and that’s why the veins in her arms looked funny. She has such little arms. They remind me of Dawn’s. Coltish limbs and a frantically beating pulse that feels hot against my skin when I gather her up.   
  
I feel strange. Like I’m swimming through syrup. My breath is hot and thick and I continue to stare at the ceiling. It gets closer and closer. When Angel and I got married, I didn’t even want children right away. I wanted to keep him all to myself. No responsibility. Just sex and discovery and mundane things like buying groceries and gardening and arguing.   
  
I had a miscarriage in the first year. I felt guilty. Like I’d caused it by not wanting babies. As if he subconsciously knew he wasn’t wanted and ripped his way out in a mess of clotted blood and tiny little bones. I remember bringing Perdita home from the hospital. She cried for days. I hated her. Angel laughed at me. He kept making me toast with butter and those salty, creamy scrambled eggs. He took Perdita from me and rocked her to sleep, murmuring Gaelic endearments. I remember asking him what he was saying. He was surprised. He hadn’t even known he was speaking another language.  
  
Did I make her scrambled eggs this morning before school? No. Cereal. Cinnamon Toast Crunch. She had a little milk moustache. She was banging her feet against my chair. I told her to stop. I packed her lunch in her backpack. It has a picture of She Ra on it. I bought it at a vintage shop. Angel took her to school. She disappeared. My daughter. I pinch my arm as hard as I can. Perdita Jane. I have never not known where she is. Never in my life. It didn’t begin until I knew her.   
  
“Buffy?”  
  
I sit up. “Angel.”  
  
He reaches for me. His eyes are swollen with salt. I don’t think he really wants to hug me but feels as if he should.   
  
“I hated Perdita, didn’t I?”  
  
He flinches. “What are you talking about?”  
  
“When we brought her home. She wouldn’t shut up. I hated her.”  
  
“You didn’t.” His hands touch my hair. “No, you didn’t. You were just confused.”  
  
“I hated her.” _This is my fault._ The unspoken words hang heavily between us. “She must be asking for me.”  
  
Angel’s mouth tightens. “Don’t think about that.”  
  
“What did Bob Arthur say?”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“The police officer. He has two first names.”  
  
“He says they’re looking. They think we did it.”  
  
“Did what?”  
  
“Killed her.”  
  
“Maybe they found out about your parents.”  
  
He chokes a little on his own breath. It is still an adjustment for him. Breathing. Sometimes he forgets to. “ _What_ did you say?”  
  
Little red dots sizzle before my eyes. “Nothing. I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry. But Perdita’s not dead.”   
  
“She’s six years old.”  
  
“What in the hell does that mean?”  
  
“It means if she’s not dead… she’s… well, she’s been taken. I don’t know. I just don’t know.” Angel sits down in the chair I vacated. He presses his hand to his forehead. It is beaded with sweat. “I don’t know what to think. We can’t—we can’t lose her. I have to find her. If only… Cordelia was here… she would have gotten a vision. She could have helped.”  
  
I hear a roaring in my ears. I feel as if every word he’s speaking is burning along my nerves. Synapses are firing but I can’t think. “Well, Cordelia is dead. Perdita isn’t.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
Does he? My knees go milky at the joints and I can still taste his semen in my mouth. I take one step and throw up all over the floor.  
  
\+ +  
  
I’m dreaming. I know I am because I can see my Mother. She is sitting on a swing in the middle of the kitchen. Her legs are moving only slightly. She is smiling but not at me. Dawn sits beside her. I blow a kiss to the dead Summers women. It is such a shame, for they never come to me in my dreams but I must move on; I can hear Perdita calling me. It is in her slurry voice. She never speaks slowly. It is as if she is afraid everyone will lose interest if she doesn’t talk quickly enough. She stumbles over words and they come like a torrent. Angel wants to take her to a speech therapist but I think its sweet. It reminds me of my sister.  
  
“Perdita?” it is a question. It is always a question. _Angel? Dawn? Willow? What did you do? What did you DO?_   
  
She doesn’t answer. I have found they never do.   
  
I walk down a long series of hallways. The floors are red. Suddenly so are the walls. The air smells like bleeding steak. My hands shake at my sides like fish on their hooks. As if they are wriggling for their freedom. I call out again; “Perdita?”  
  
The wallpaper has faces. I stare at them. I run my fingers down the wall and my palm is scored by the teeth. Little traces of crimson on my skin and I begin to scream. But no sound emerges from my startled mouth. My throat bulges with the effort.  
  
“Perdita?” a whisper. “Perdita?”  
  
Someone grabs me. I whirl around but cannot see them. I feel a hot, tearing sensation and my throat opens up. They’ve run a knife into my vocal chords. A voice croons; “Hush now, baby. Don’t say a word.”  
  
“Buffy? Buffy? Wake up. Wake up, love.”  
  
My eyes open. They are heavy and burn with the weight of darkness. “What is it? Angel, what is it? Did they find her?”  
  
His face melts into the shadows. “No. The police want to ask us some questions.”


	2. Chapter 2

Mirrored walls surround us and I stare at my reflections. I sit beside Angel in a suffocating room somewhere in the back of the police station. He is wearing a black sweater and black pants. Sometimes I wonder if he will ever stop mourning. After he pulled me from sleep, he dressed me carefully in jeans and this tight white T-shirt that I hate. One summer, we were gardening and we fucked in the dirt. Flowers drenched my hair and I had mud in my mouth. He yanked my head back so sharply that it stung for days. I was wearing this T-shirt. It reminds me of that. It reminds me of the day we made Perdita. I wonder if it’s appropriate that he has put me in it on the day we lost her.   
  
“Are you ok?” he murmurs.   
  
“Fabulous.”  
  
He winces. “What?”  
  
“I’m fabulous, Angel.”  
  
“Stop it.”  
  
“ _You_ stop it. Don’t ask me how I am. Don’t ask me a question that has no other logical answer but ‘I want to die’.”   
  
He doesn’t respond. I stare at the side of his face for a moment. He looks older. It has been a gradual progression, but over the years, tiny threads of silver have woven into his hair. There are laugh lines around his eyes. I think I only started to look old when I had Perdita. She made bluish milk seep from my breasts. She made me scream and sweat and beg the doctors for medication. She kept me up night after night until I felt as if I was in the middle of a fever dream. She has put grey into my hair from constant worry. The time she ran out onto the road. The time she stuck her face against a Doberman puppy and squealed. The nameless faceless strangers. _Don’t talk to strangers, Perdy. They want to take you from me. But you can’t let them, ok? You have to help Mommy. You have to scream as loud as you can. Why don’t we practice?_   
  
“I wonder if she screamed.”  
  
Angel doesn’t look at me. “What?”  
  
“I wonder if she screamed. I taught her how.”  
  
“She was only six.”  
  
“She _is_ six. She _is_. Don’t start saying she _was_. Don’t.”  
  
“I’m sorry.” His hand presses against my knee. I stare at it. At least I brushed my teeth and I can’t still taste the salt of his semen against my tongue. “I didn’t mean that.”  
  
“Didn’t you? I bet you’ll just give up.”  
  
“What does that mean?”  
  
“Exactly what I said.” The mirrors are capturing my angry mouth. Four Buffys sneer at four Angels.   
  
“I know you’re upset.”  
  
“She’s my daughter. Don’t start talking about her like she doesn’t exist anymore.”  
  
“She’s my daughter too.”  
  
“Not in the same way.”  
  
“We can’t have this discussion.”  
  
I ignore him. “She came from me. She ripped me apart and I had to get sewn back together. I felt her swimming in my belly for months. She was covered in my insides until the doctor cleaned her off. We had a cord connecting us.” Suddenly I feel like throwing up and press a shaking hand to my lips. “I can still feel it. Tugging.”  
  
Tears slip silently down Angel’s cheeks. He sits absolutely still. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“What for?”  
  
“I cut the cord. It was… remember? It was like a rite of passage.”  
  
My head feels heavy. “Nothing about this is your fault.” I always have to comfort him. _Don’t feel guilty, Angel. That was Angelus. You didn’t kill Jenny. You didn’t torture Giles. You didn’t try to rape Dawn. That was Angelus. Don’t ever feel guilty._ My stomach roils and I get up. “They’ll find her. We’ll find her. We have to.”  
  
“Do you think she’s cold?”  
  
One hard sob escapes my throat. It stings and I close my eyes. She is real. She is out there, somewhere. She has not stopped existing simply because I can’t see her. “Oh God, did she have her sweater? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t—“  
  
Angel’s arms encircle me from behind and he pulls me into the cradle of his chest. Spasms snake through my torso until it feels as if my spinal cord will shatter into little pieces. His hands rest against my lower belly, near my pubic hair. I think if he put his fingers inside me right now they would come back soaked with blood. My murderous womb.  
  
“Angel? Ms. Summers?”  
  
It is Bob Arthur. I don’t think he can quite figure out why Angel has no last name. Maybe he believes my husband is someone else’s husband as well. Perhaps Perdita is illegitimate. We don’t want anyone to know. If only we did have small, petty worries like that. The urge to vomit begins to pass and I feel slippery. My stomach is still floaty but I disentangle myself from Angel’s arms and sit down.  
  
“Did you find her?”  
  
Bob Arthur looks uncomfortable. “I’m afraid not. But to help in doing so, we’d like to ask you some questions. Angel, would it be all right if we spoke to your wife alone?”  
  
Angel’s hand creeps along my shoulder. “Why?”  
  
“We find it helps concentration.”  
  
“It’s fine,” I respond. “It’s fine.”  
  
Angel leaves. He doesn’t want to, I know. But I don’t care what he wants. I picture her headstone, rough from weather. Lilies surrounding the bottom like little waves.  
  


Perdita Jane Summers  
2007 – 2013  
Beloved daughter  
 _There will be stars forever, while we sleep_  


  
  
I used to read her that poem before bed. She liked it because of the stars. She liked science. Once I found her dissecting a dead beetle. I was disgusted and yet strangely fascinated. Where had she come from? This little being? I felt suddenly as if I didn’t know her.  
  
“Ms. Summers.”  
  
“Buffy.”  
  
“Would you like a lawyer present?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Do you mind if I use a tape recorder?”  
  
“No.”  
  
Bob Arthur smiles at me. “You’re very accommodating.”  
  
“My daughter is missing.”  
  
“I’m sorry. That was tactless of me.”  
  
I don’t answer. The mirrors wink at me.  
  
Arthur clears his throat. It sounds as if he’s had a cold. Thick, mucus-y. “When did you last see your daughter, Buffy?”  
  
I close my eyes. “This morning. I slept in a little. Angel dressed her in those hideous pink pants. I gave her a bowl of cereal and read over my class schedule as she ate. She kept kicking my chair and I told her to stop. I packed her lunch. Peanut butter sandwich and an apple. I gave her, her backpack and Angel took her to school.” I kissed her warm little head. Near her bangs, so I could taste her soap against my lips. She smelled like cinnamon and peaches and bubbles. Her fingers clung to my arm for a moment and she whispered, “Have a good day, Mommy.”   
  
Arthur makes some notes. “How is your relationship with your husband?”  
  
“Good.”  
  
“Just good?”  
  
“Its good.”  
  
“Your sex life?”  
  
I stare at him for a moment. “Excellent, thank you.”  
  
“Has your husband ever displayed any interest in your daughter?”  
  
I begin to laugh. I’m afraid for one horrifying moment that I’m going to throw up. “You mean, does he want to fuck our six year old?”  
  
Arthur is unfazed. “Yes. That’s what I mean.”  
  
“Not that I’m aware of.” My voice is scathing. “No. Angel likes women.”  
  
“Where were you all day?”  
  
“Teaching my classes.”  
  
“What do you teach?”  
  
“Self defence. I run a clinic in Los Angeles.”  
  
“What made you decide to teach that?”  
  
I squirm a little. “There’s a lot of perverts and psychos in the world.”  
  
“You’ve got that right.” Arthur pauses and then says; “Did you kill your daughter?”  
  
I don’t flinch. “No.”  
  
“How would you categorize your relationship with her?”  
  
“She’s my daughter.”  
  
“Yes…?”  
  
“She’s mine. I would hurt myself before I’d hurt her. I would kill for her.”  
  
“I’ll remember that.” But Arthur is smiling faintly. “Do you know of anyone who would hurt her?”  
  
I shake my head. “No.”  
  
“Grandparents?”  
  
“My Mother died a long time ago. My father died a year ago. Angel’s parents have been dead for ages. There’s no one.”  
  
“Uncles, Aunts?”  
  
“My sister Dawn died in a car crash four years ago.” Something flickers on the edge of my brain but I cannot snap around it quickly enough. “Angel’s sister is dead. Perdita’s Godfather died of liver failure. He’s buried in England.”  
  
“Hmmm…”  
  
“Was it a stranger?”  
  
“We are doing everything possible to figure that out and find your daughter, Ms. Summers.”  
  
“Buffy. Please. Call me by something I recognize.”  
  
Arthur smiles. “All right. Buffy. That’s it for now, I think. We’ll talk to your husband now.”  
  
I nod. My body brushes Angel’s as we pass. He smells like musk and sweat and fear. The bathroom is small and cold. I bend down in the stall until the dragging heaves stop and my belly is empty. Pressing my face to the porcelain, I picture Perdita’s scarred shoulder. I picture her little knees. I can see her teeth, broken. I can smell the bleeding steak.   
  
“I’ll find you,” I whisper. The ceiling is blotchy. “I’ll find you even if they give up. I promise.”


	3. Chapter 3

Twisted in the sheets of my bed, I fold their sweatiness around my trembling body and imagine closing my eyes. I think I am dreaming. Angel isn’t beside me. He is standing by the window, smoking. I watch him for a moment. The smoke hisses against the blue curtains as it travels into the night sky. The stars burn. My eyes are swelling and buckling under the weight of so many unshed tears. Perdita asked me once what happens when you die. _Do you rot, Mommy? What happens to your body?_ My little scientist. I said something vague. _You become part of the earth, Perdy. You help it, by giving it your body._ She seemed satisfied with that answer. _I want to help the earth._  
  
Angel turns. Slowly. His fangs cut through his lips. Blood spills down over his chin. I smell him and murmur; “Angelus.”  
  
“Slayer.”  
  
No, he is Spike. I am in the alley and Spike is whispering it against my shoulder as he fucks me. “Slayer, Slayer, oh Slayer…” as if it is a lament. I don’t think he is speaking to me. My back is scored by the brick and I remember how every time I went to the bathroom during my affair with Spike, there was blood. My murderous womb couldn’t stand being fucked by a murderer. What a hypocrite.   
  
“Buffy?”  
  
I rear back and expect to see Spike. It is Dawn. She has her hands on my shoulders. “Buffy, no.” We are standing at the precipice. Blue light flickers over her face. Electricity crackles; virginal white. I whisper; “Dawnie, I have to.” Her face melts. She is crying. She is dead. She is on a slab in the police station. I am identifying her body. “Yes, that’s my sister. Dawn Summers.” My knees buckle and Angel grabs me before I can plummet into the glass. Dawn’s hair is covered with blood. There are cuts across her naked breasts. But it is her. “My sister…” I whisper, little sobs tearing my throat. “Dawnie…”  
  
Perdita is lying on the slab. Her little body is covered with stab wounds. The pink pants are red. I stand in front of the glass, without Angel beside me. “Yes, that’s my daughter.” I pause and look at the dark brown bangs. She smells of bubbles and peaches and cinnamon toast crunch. But I can’t smell her. We are separated by the wall and by death and oh god… “Perdita Jane Summers,” I murmur and someone takes my hand. I look up. It is Wesley. He leans down and kisses my forehead. It feels like a blessing.   
  
“Buffy?”  
  
With a groan, I awaken and stare into Angel’s eyes. “What? Did they find her?”  
  
“No… no.”  
  
“Then don’t wake me up again.”  
  
“You were crying out.”  
  
I sit up. The sheets tangle around my waist. I’m still in the white T-shirt but it feels salty and itchy, as if I’ve been swimming in the ocean. I remember my dream. Its knotted, wormy confusion. “I had a dream.”  
  
“Of her?”  
  
Angel has stopped calling her by her name. The mourning has already begun for him.   
  
“Of lots of things.” I look at the window. The blue curtains sway in the heavy breeze. “I think I should go to LA.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“To look for her.”  
  
Angel sighs. “Buffy…”  
  
“Don’t say my name like that. Don’t say my name if you’ve already forgotten hers.”  
  
“The police… the police are handling this.”  
  
“Perdita’s not home.”  
  
“You think it happens that quickly?”  
  
“Your condescension is really not helping.”  
  
He sits up too, leaning against the headboard. His forehead is prickled with sweat. “What do you want me to say? You had a dream? Big fucking deal, Buffy. This isn’t the old days. Your dreams aren’t prophecies. You can’t patrol. You’re not the Slayer anymore.”  
  
“I’m still the Slayer,” I respond calmly. “I will always be the Slayer.”  
  
“You manage the rest of the Slayers. You train them. But you’re not the one and only. You have to get past that.”  
  
“You, you, you,” I imitate him. “Is this about me? I don’t think so. I know what this is about. You feel helpless. You’re not a vampire. You don’t have the strength. I don’t care, Angel. _I_ will find our daughter. You can stay home if you want to.”  
  
“You think I don’t miss her?” his voice cracks. “You don’t think she’s the most important being in the world to me?”  
  
My throat feels like its been sliced open. “How can she be, Angel? Her name isn’t Cordelia.”  
  
The sheets slip away as I get up from the bed and walk out of the room. I keep a spare change of clothes in my car. It’s a dark green Pontiac. There are little pictures of Perdita and Angel stuck to the cup-holder. I realize suddenly that Perdita’s eyes are blackened out from coffee stains. Changing into old jeans and a yellow sweater, I turn the ignition. All of my favourite poets gassed themselves to death. From ovens or garages and it was usually some inner torment. I wonder if your child disappearing from the earth counts. I wonder for a moment, and then back out of the driveway.   
  
It does not take long to get to the beating heart of Los Angeles. I remember the route well, and pull up at the apartment building without any difficulty. The stars are still burning. The moon looks like a giant mirror, and it winks at me. I glare up at it and then walk down the steps. They are rickety and threaten to collapse beneath my weight. They have done this before, and they will do it again, long after someone carves my name in stone.  
  
I knock once. Twice. Three times. If he’s drinking, I’ll kill him.  
  
The door opens. “Buffy.” His voice is thick and milky from sleep.   
  
I take one step forward. “Did you hear?”  
  
“I heard.” He opens his arms.  
  
I go into them. His stubble is warm and rough against my forehead. I feel his lips, hot against my ear. “You have to help me, Wes.”


	4. Chapter 4

Wesley makes me sit down. His hands are steady on my face as he asks me what I want to drink. I don’t answer. The question seems silly. I don’t want anything to drink. I want my daughter back. I wish there was some way I could hollow out my belly and put her back inside. I wish there was some way I could go back and stop Angel before he cut the cord. Before he freed her from my womb. Before they cleaned my blood off her skin and she began to cry and she was _free_. I think that was the moment I lost her.  
  
He hands me a whisky. I drink it without protest and he watches my mouth. It reminds me of the time I spilled vodka and ice on him. In this apartment. He laughed at my apologies. I was never allowed to be polite with him.   
  
Finally I ask. “Have you heard anything?”  
  
“No.” He sounds regretful. “No, there’s nothing.”  
  
“It wasn’t a regular kidnapping.”  
  
“Why do you say that?” his robe falls open a little. I think he’s naked beneath it.  
  
“I had a dream.”  
  
“Ahhh.”  
  
“Angel doesn’t believe me.”  
  
“That’s not part of Angel’s life any longer.”  
  
“You couldn’t be more right,” I whisper bitterly. “No more saving souls. No more saving our daughter. He’s _human_ now.”  
  
“You hate that, don’t you?”  
  
My eyes meet Wesley’s. Green drowns in the darkness. “It’s different. _He’s_ different. He’s always hot. It’s as if he has a fever. His heart beats. God, sometimes I lie awake and it’s all I can hear. It was so… it was so different when he was a vampire.”  
  
“You’ve had no difficulty sleeping with humans in the past, Buffy.”  
  
“It’s Angel. It’s not Angel. He’s not himself.” I pause and bend over my knees a little. My stomach hurts. It feels like thunder is rolling through my veins. “You know he’s changed, Wes. He’s already mourning her. He’s already forgotten that there’s a possibility she’s alive.”  
  
“Not a strong one.”  
  
I’m going to throw up. My palms feel clammy. “She’s alive. I had a dream. I know she is.”  
  
“I believe you,” he says gently. “Shall we look for her?”  
  
Relief rushes through my head. “Yes. Yes we _shall_.”  
  
His smile is brief and I catch a glimpse of sharp, white teeth. “How is it you still have your sense of humour?”  
  
“Because I need something to be left.”  
  
I get up and go into the bathroom. The toilet seat has been left up. I put it down with a clank and sit. Normal things. After flushing, I wash my hands. Soap, water. Staring at myself in the mirror, I notice my indigo eyes. My red, slack mouth. The black of my irises floating in a white sea. I look drunk, crazy, my hair hanging in blonde ribbons down my back.   
  
If I find her, will everything go back to the way it was? No. She will be changed. She will have been invaded by strange hands. I will have been raped by circumstance. Angel will be waiting for the second blow to fall. Wesley will just be waiting. That has not changed.   
  
“Buffy?” a knock. He is worried. Did I hang myself on the shower rod? Did I drown myself in the bathtub?   
  
“Coming.”  
  
We leave together and take my car. It blends well with the shadows. Los Angeles smells like a burnt heart. He takes me to the bowels of the city. Wesley will always know the underground better than me. There is layer upon layer of petty crime, prostitution, murder, sexual assault, pedophilia, porn rings… it goes on and on. He used to tell me about it, when everything got to be too much and he couldn’t keep it inside. At the time, I imagined the little details nibbling at his liver and chewing on his spleen. I sometimes think he will be dead of alcoholism by the time he is fifty. That will be the official cause of death. The real one will be Los Angeles.   
  
He takes my hand in his as we walk through a cobbled square. I don’t think it’s really because he wants to. It’s more to keep me tethered to his side. He has learned not to trust me. I like that about him. Angel was too trusting. He closed his eyes when I told him to.   
  
“So what’s the what?” I ask.   
  
“I know a few people we can talk to.”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“People.” He sighs. “People who deal in…”  
  
“Child porn?” I inquire, my breath unhinged. “Is that what you’re trying to spit out?”  
  
“It is.”  
  
“How can you talk to them? How can you even _look_ at them?” I try to pry my fingers from his but he bites down with his palm and doesn’t let go.   
  
“I do it because I have to.”   
  
“No you don’t. No one _has_ to be buddies with people who molest children.”  
  
“I deal with the worst dregs of society each day, Buffy,” he says. “It’s a part of my job. Running Wolfram and Hart means I have to know everyone. It means that I have to know them so I can eventually get rid of them.”  
  
“If one of them took Perdita, I might blame you.” I pause and stare at the pale reflection of the moon. “I can hardly believe she’s out there.”  
  
“What do you mean?”   
  
“She’s _there_. She’s somewhere. She’s not with me.” Little gasps escape my throat. “She’s a real person, Wesley. She has arms and bones and knees. She has bangs that always fall into her eyes. She has a vagina that someone might try to touch. They might try to get _inside_ her. She’s only _six_. God. She’s only _six_. She’s not big enough.” I’m bent over on the street. I feel the dry heaves shattering my body. Wesley’s hands are on my waist. His hot tears drip onto my cheek. Nothing is coming from my stomach. Nothing comes from nothing. But I continue to gag.   
  
“Shhh,” he whispers. He doesn’t know what to say. “Shhh, we’ll find her.”  
  
“All I can see are men’s penises,” I choke a little on the word. “They’re too big. They’re so disgusting and purple and distended and she won’t know what they are. Whoever has her… god, Wes. They might try to do it. They’ll rip her apart. They’ll rape her. She hasn’t had her period. She doesn’t know what sex is. I don’t want her to know yet. Sex only brings monsters.”  
  
He slaps me. I rear back in shock, but it’s as if he has thrown cold water on my face.  
  
“Calm the fuck down,” Wesley intones. We are nose to nose. “If you want to find your daughter, you have to be calm. You can’t be hysterical. That can come later. Do you hear me, Buffy? I love her too. Afterwards, we can go back to my apartment and you can scream all you like. But not here, not now.”  
  
I kiss him. Just once. He tastes milky, like sleep. “Thank you. Ok. Ok.”  
  
“All right. Now let’s go.”


	5. Chapter 5

Wesley’s fingers cleave through mine as we talk to the owner of a porn shop on Samson Street. He looks like a Gorilla. His nostrils are black wounds. I stare at his hands and wonder if they could hurt a child. His wormy breath is starting to make me feel sick. I can’t hear what they’re saying.

Every so often I catch small glimpses of flesh behind the crimson curtains in the back. There are people having sex. Prostitutes and their customers. Probably a married couple here for a thrill. I see a breast. A rose red nipple. A penis. Glistening. A mouth closes around it. Just parts. Parts of human beings. Perdita has parts. Liver and bladder and bony knees and little tendons in her throat. I like to press my face against her heart when she’s sleeping and listen to its meaty clicks. She never pushes me away. Once she gathered my head in her little hands and held it as if she was about to dissect it. Her fingers explored my cheeks and eyelashes and the heavy sweep of my brows. She whispered, I’m trying to sleep, Mommy. I laughed. She makes me laugh.

My hand shrugs out of Wesley’s. Our eyes meet for a quick second. “Are you all right?”

I nod. “Just want to look.”

The Gorilla smiles. He imagines that I’m turned on by this. He’s probably wondering what it would be like to fuck me. I almost wish he would try. I could kill him with one snap crackle pop. That’s one of Perdita’s favourite bits about eating Rice Krispies. The sound amazes her. How does it do that? Mommy, how does it do that? She was determined to figure it out.

I run my fingers down a row of magazines. There are girls dressed as little girls. Kilts and knee socks and starchy buttoned shirts. Braids and bows and lollipops. The girls have cocks in their mouths. Fingers in their asses. They all look legal. I wonder what made them do this. Money? Stupidity? A ‘fuck you’ to society and their parents? I wonder if they know what sick fantasies they are cultivating. I wonder if they know they helped Perdita vanish. I suspect they do. Bile rises in my throat and I remember my dream. My daughter on the slab. Wesley’s kiss like a blessing. It seems as if I am sliding towards it; that hissing eventuality that I cannot escape.

“Buffy?”

“Yes?”

Wesley takes my hand again. He draws me against his side. I notice the strained tightness of his mouth. “He doesn’t know anything. No new girls have entered the ring lately.”

“Can I kill him?” I ask seriously.

“No. Maybe. Not right now.”

“Can we go?”

“Yes.” He reaches up to touch my cheek. “Yes.”

“Do you think she’s dead, Wes?”

“No.”

“Yes you do.”

“Don’t tell me what I think, Buffy. I told you I don’t.”

“You’re not afraid to get mad at me?” I ask. “Even now? I might go crazy.”

“If you do, I’ll be here.” He opens the door and leads me out.

We breathe the starry air and he leans down. His mouth covers mine. I choke a little but press up and into him.

“I’m sorry. I never could help myself.”

I laugh a little. I’m trying to sleep, Mommy. One hard sob escapes my chest. It feels like a piranha, chewing at my insides with a fishy mouth. “We never could help ourselves, Wes. Remember the first time?”

“Yes.”

I feel bad for bringing it up. I know he remembers even more than I do. It is like poison. Los Angeles and our past. Angel. Perdita. The tangled things that come between us every day. I can’t stop myself.

“Why did we pick the shower?”

“I picked it.”

“Right. You came in and interrupted me. You said you needed the soap. You were such a liar. And the second time? Isn’t that always the one that means something? The first time could be chalked up to a mistake. A blip. But the second time is when you know what’re doing and you do it anyway. I was getting some cereal. And you knocked the box out of my hand and said you’d been thinking about it all day. How I felt inside. And you pushed me up against the counter and I had a red mark across my ass for days—“

“Buffy.” Wesley’s hands grab my elbows. He yanks me close and looks straight into my eyes. “I’d rather not talk about this. Do you understand? I simply can’t.”

Tiny tears drip from the corners of my eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be.”

“Never give an inch.”

“Not with you. I’ve learned not to.”

“You’re smart.”

“I know.”

I feel his breath on my face. His lips on my forehead. We continue to walk and I stare up at the moon. It is such a waxy, stupid, pale reflection.

+

The door to our house is unlocked. I open it with steady hands. Perdita’s ghost rushes into me. Welcome home, Mommy. I found lots of bugs at school today. Her chocolate bangs fall in her eyes. She smiles at me with two perfect rows of teeth. But when I reach out to touch the plastic-y smooth cheeks, she disappears.

“Angel?” I call, dropping my keys on the hall table. They clatter and bounce for a second. “Angel, are you here?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” he asks. He’s sitting in the living room, slouched on the chair in front of the TV. But it isn’t on.

“I thought you might be at the police station.”

He stands up. “No.”

“Ok.”

“Where were you?”

“Looking. I told you I had to look.”

“For what?” he chuckles a little. “Her to pop out from behind something and say ‘here I am’?”

I suck in my breath. “That was…”

“What? Inappropriate? If you get to mention Cordy, I think I’m allowed to make jokes about our dead daughter.”

I realize he’s been drinking. I realize I still love him even after everything. Always mourning. Always waiting for the blow to fall. He hears the thunk of the axe in every doorbell. He has tasted this for years and now there must be a certain triumph. I was right, Buffy. You stupid bitch to think we could be happy.

I go over to him. “What did you drink?”

“What’d you mean?”

“You’re drunk.”

“I’m inebriated, yes,” he giggles a bit and leans toward me. “Still love you, Buffy. But I hate you too.”

“I know.” I stick my shoulder in his armpit and help him over to the couch. “Want some coffee?”

“I love coffee. Love human things.”

My heart lurches.

“Love you. Love Perdy. Love golf. Love Cordy.”

Stupid tears start to sting my eyes. “I’m sorry she died Angel.”

“Me too.” He flops back on the couch and groans. “Sick. I feel sick.”

“Sleep.” I press my lips against the cool white of his cheek and whisper, as if to a child, “Sleep, darling.”

+

Sunnydale is still a crater. The state of California has failed to fill it with dust and concrete and steel. It smells like bones. I stop my car near the edge and get out. I always feel a certain satisfaction when I come here. But that has congealed over the years. When Dawn died, I stopped coming here at all. It seemed worthless. It seemed as if I couldn’t let old wounds become scars.

I never could. I never will.

I’m never gonna change. I can’t change. I want my life to be with you.

I hear that girl whisper as I stare out over the grassy hole that used to be my town. I see Perdita, running towards me. I see Angel, exploding into ash. I see Spike, smirking. I see Dawn, in purple velvet. I see Willow, reaching. I see Xander, longing. I see Angelus. I see Angelus.

“Perdita.” I fall to my knees in the dirt. The veins snaking through my arms are blue. My throat opens as if to sing and I am wailing. Animal sounds come from my lungs and I scratch at the mud. I want to help the earth. No. Not yet, not yet, not yet.


	6. Chapter 6

Angel’s arms encircle me. I lay against him, half asleep, my eyes fluttering with distorted dreams. Images flicker behind my eyelids, like black fingers stroking my insides. Perdita’s bald, pink head when she was newly born. The yellow velvet Willow wore at my wedding. My Mother and Giles, on the hood of a car. Dawn’s body in the police station. Clean, thin weals across her naked breasts. Spike’s lizard tongue in my mouth. _Slayer, Slayer_. How Angel marvelled at the kicking presence in my swollen belly. _She wants to get out_ he would whisper. _She wants to be free._ And we would sit for hours with him murmuring to Perdita before she had a name.   
  
He took me to see _The Phantom of the Opera_ on our honeymoon. We both smelled of each other. I remember sitting next to him, my breath hot and my mouth tasting of his semen. He kept kissing me. I barely watched the production. But I wasn’t entirely blinded by sex. Angel had been the Phantom, existing in the voiceless Slayer hell fury of my life and I had let him be that. I had craved his fire. Now he really did burn. Feverish and grasping; starving for humanity – and it was as if he was my baby. I was Darla. I was his Mother. I let him inside me and I let him taste life and now the mask was off.   
  
The mask is off.   
  
“Buffy?” he whispers in drunken sleep.   
  
“Yes?”  
  
He doesn’t answer. Maybe he is dreaming.  
  
I press my face against his neck. My lips seek out the pulse. He tastes of poppies. “Angel?”  
  
“Mmmm.”  
  
“Why do you think Cordelia died?”  
  
He doesn’t flinch. He is blurred by whisky. “Loved me. Cordy loved me.”  
  
I nod. I remember the song they played at our wedding. _Take my hand, take my whole life too_.   
  
“Angel?”  
  
“What?” he’s irritated.   
  
“Do you still love her?”  
  
“Always.”  
  
The old word reaches down inside me. It pulls out my breath. I wriggle away from him and off the couch. It closes around him like lips and he burrows deeper. I turn and go upstairs.   
  
Perdita’s door is shut tight but I open it and step inside. All it takes is one quick movement with my feet and I am there. I am in the hallway of faces. I can smell the bleeding steak and hear the crooning voice; _Hush now, baby. Hush now_. Didn’t I sing that to her when she could fit into the cradle of my palms? Why did I? Why did I? The answer comes to me suddenly. My Mother sang that to me.   
  
Joyce clings like a necklace as I walk in my daughter’s room. Perdita is careful with science but messy with her things. Toys escape their trunks like intestines spilling from skin. Her bedspread is blue. Angel painted an entire solar system on her ceiling. When the lights are off, it glistens and glows as if it is about to spin down around her. She loves being surrounded by the stars. I wonder. Can she see them from where she is now? Are her eyes purple scars? Can she _see_?   
  
“Perdy,” I say out loud. It makes it real. “You have to clean your room. I can’t find you in here.” Methodically, I begin to put things away. Little drawings from pre-school. A paper entitled ‘What do I Love?’   
  
Mommy  
Bugs  
Grass  
Peanut butter  
Daddy  
Saturn  
Skating  
Alice in Wonderland  
  
I touch the little letters with my palms. She has fallen down the rabbit hole. Swallowed by the earth. I wonder if this was a warning. I wonder if everything has always been a warning.   
  
I remember how she would press her eyelashes to mine. I remember and continue cleaning.  
  
+  
  
How long does spaghetti take to soften? I’ve forgotten. It writhes in the bubbling water. Maybe twenty minutes? A fierce longing rises in my throat. I should be able to call my Mother and ask her. Perdita’s arms close around my thigh. She presses her face against my stomach. She asks when dinner will be ready. _My belly button is making funny noises._ I laugh and reach down to touch the smooth cheeks. But she is gone. There is only a ringing phone. Insistent, shrill.  
  
“Hello?”  
  
“Ms. Summers?”  
  
“Buffy.”  
  
“Buffy. This is Bob Arthur.”  
  
I turn down the burner and glance at the floor. Perdita’s body lies at my feet, twisted and broken. Her clavicle pokes through her skin. “Yes?”  
  
“This may not mean anything, Buffy,” he says, sounding as if he still has a cold. “But a father and son were walking through the woods today and found a body.”  
  
 _I want to help the earth_.  
  
Suddenly I wish he wasn’t calling me by something I recognize. “Is it her?”   
  
“We can’t be sure. The body—“ he blows his nose. “The body is… mangled. We will need to draw Perdita’s dental records and do some tests.”  
  
“Dr. Byrom,” I answer automatically. “On King Street. Can I see her?”  
  
“We’re not sure if it is a female,” he answers. “The body was not… it wasn’t intact.”  
  
My eyes drift to the mutilated, burning spaghetti. Pale, skinny limbs contorting in boiling water. “Oh. I get it.”  
  
“Please don’t assume anything,” Bob Arthur cautions. “But… simply be prepared. We’ll call you when we have news. The second we have news.”  
  
He sounds miserable. I want to feel sorry for him. “Has she spoken?”  
  
“Pardon me?” he clears his mucus-y throat. “Buffy… are you all right?”  
  
“Yes.” I hang up. The phone clatters on its stand and almost falls. When Angel and I chose the paint colour for this room, we argued. I wanted green. He wanted beige and he wouldn’t give in. He wasn’t scared I would leave him, I suppose. The cookies were ready. I had thought ahead. He was getting older. It was now or never. Now or never.  
  
“Angel?”   
  
“Yes?” a mumble. He is sobering up and sounds as if he’s dreading it.   
  
“That was Bob Arthur. I guess he gets stuck bearing the news.” My stomach feels unhinged and I think my eyes are swimming somewhere in my skull. “They found a body.”   
  
+  
  
I am driving into nowhere. The sun sets against the horizon. Every so often I reach for one of those airplane bags. Angel steals them every time he goes on trips because Perdita gets carsick. Now it is me. Nothing comes from nothing but my stomach continues to heave. My eyes are dry. Los Angeles teems with snaky activity. I don’t know where I’m going.  
  
I pass Angel’s art gallery. He was taking a week off when she left. Now I wonder if he will ever go back to work. I pass my clinic. Will I teach? It seems pointless. It seems like there is nothing but a garage choked with carbon monoxide. I cannot see anything but that. Ovens and balloon-y mouths and purple eyes.   
  
_There will be stars forever, while we sleep_.  
  
I drive by the porn shops. Red-light district with the sad eyed prostitutes. I drive by Spike.  
  
Wait.   
  
My neck cranes. Platinum hair and fishy pale skin. “William?” I whisper. I haven’t see him since Dawn died. He disappeared soon after. I remember what the police told me. The cuts across her breasts were not from the accident. They were from sex. I stared at her clean, polished body on the slab and remembered leaping into a white storm. Was it so she could end up that way? Fucking a monster with a soul.   
  
_You become me_.


	7. Chapter 7

The sky bleeds stars as I walk up the steps to Wesley’s apartment. The moon winks at me. It’s dripping reflection is making my head hurt. Something – a thought, an inkling - prickles at the edge of my brain, wanting entrance. But I don’t know what it is. All I can breathe is William’s face. His skin paler than carbon monoxide. I didn’t know he was in Los Angeles. I didn’t know he thought he could play on my turf. I lost contact with him when Dawn died. When I identified her body and watched the light flicker over her breasts. Snaky cuts and brown nipples and she was so young. Too young to be letting him inside her.   
  
Faith hisses against my ear. _You become me_.  
  
I don’t knock. Wesley’s door is open. Sometimes I think it is a form of suicide that he is hoping will catch up with him.   
  
“Wes?” I say.  
  
“In here.”  
  
I walk through to the kitchen. It smells vaguely of whiskey and poppies. A little rush of guilt as I remember pressing my face to Angel’s pulse and tasting the hot throb of his heart. My husband. I do love him. I do adore him.   
  
Wesley looks up from the stove. “What is it?”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“You have that expression.”  
  
“They found a body. A father and son found one. They were on a nature walk and got a little more than they bargained for.”  
  
He turns down one of the burners and stares at the floor. “Is it her?”  
  
“Would I be standing here if I knew?”  
  
He nods. “Point taken. How soon will you know?”  
  
“Dental records.” I shrug. My bones feel crisp. I am floating somewhere above, watching this. “It’ll take a while, I guess. It was mangled. That’s what Bob Arthur said.”  
  
Wesley is watching me carefully. “Buffy.”  
  
“I’m not sure what mangled means. Maybe a vampire got her. That would be poetic justice, wouldn’t it?”  
  
“Would it?”  
  
I barely hear him. He is blurring. “Spike said something to me once. He asked me how many of his _kind_ I’d done. How many I’d murdered. I said not enough. I’ve killed my entire life. I tried to murder Faith. I stuck a knife in her gut because of my boyfriend. I killed Angel. I killed my son. I killed _myself_.” My breaths come in oily pants. “Do you know what the name Perdita means?”  
  
Wesley’s voice is quiet, raspy. “Yes.”  
  
“What does it mean?”  
  
“Buffy.”  
  
“It means ‘the lost’. Maybe I wanted this. Maybe that’s why I named her—“  
  
“You named her after the Mother Dalmatian in that infernal Disney film, Buffy.” He sounds angry but his tone is low. “You are not responsible for Perdita’s disappearance. If you persist, I’ll be forced to slap you.”  
  
“I’ll slap you back.”  
  
“So we’re at an impasse.”  
  
I slump back against the fridge. It’s cool hum feels like tiny fingers on my spine. “Do you think she’s scared?”  
  
“I do.”  
  
My wrists look like little throats. So ready to be laced with red ribbon. “Do you think she’s dead?”  
  
“Do you feel she is?”  
  
“No.” My hand presses to my belly. Tugging. “No. I still feel her.”  
  
“I believe you. I believe she’s alive, Buffy.” He reaches out and draws me against him. His stubble is a hot burn on my forehead. “She’s your daughter.”  
  
“Yes.” I am agreeing. Now I say it in acceptance. “Yes.”  
  
His lips sear mine in the annihilating darkness. We stumble towards the bedroom. I am sure he will split me in two and find nothing but seeds in my bloodripe womb. I reap and I reap.  
  
I kill.  
  
They are the same things. Trophies.   
  
Wesley comes inside me and shudders, naked bright and salt wet.   
  
+  
  
I programmed my cell phone to ring ‘Wind Beneath my Wings’. It’s funny how being an adult means you don’t have to care about being dorky. Now all it makes me think of is William. I fumble for it. Wesley is lying on the other side of the bed, turned away from me. His hair is black as walnuts against the white sheets.  
  
“Hello?”  
  
“Buffy.”   
  
I sit up. My thighs feel sticky with sweat and semen. “Angel.”  
  
“It’s not her.” He sounds sober and relieved and yet not. “They just called. It’s not her.”  
  
My stomach starts to sting. “I don’t know what to say.”   
  
“I know. Where are you?”  
  
“In LA. Looking.”  
  
“Come home.”  
  
“I can’t.”  
  
“Are you with him?”  
  
I stare blindly at the wall. It bends and bows with shadows. “With who?”  
  
“Wes.”  
  
“No.” I pause and decide that’s true. “Were you dreaming of Cordelia?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“I love you, Angel.”  
  
He sighs a little. “I’ve always loved you, Buffy.”  
  
That old word. He has been so careless with it. “Have you?”  
  
“Yes.” I can almost hear his heart beating through the line. “But we need to talk.”  
  
“After Perdy. After we know.”  
  
“No. Now.”   
  
I am already choking. “Why?”  
  
“Because I’m tired of waiting. I’m tired of waiting for you.”  
  
He hangs up and I stare down at the phone. He has hooked me by the throat and I will have to go. I used to feel like a vessel for all of his dreams. Shanshu and normalcy and McDonalds and babies and if I can’t make this work, I will have failed him. His second chance and I will be the Bringer.   
  
I will reap what I have sown.


	8. Chapter 8

The door to our home cuts across the night with its blue edges. I stare at it for a moment. All of its implications. If I walk through it, I will be promising something. The times I have ran out, knocking my elbow and scraping our tenuous past. Rushing to fuck Wesley. Rushing to look for Dawn. Rushing, rushing, away. I can’t remember now why we painted it blue. But it reminds me of my sister’s skin when she lay on that slab. It looked like it might taste Pacific-salty with all of its blooming poppy-red contusions. Her eyes were black slashes and her nipples perfect little flowers. I felt a stab of almost incestuous love for her in that moment. She looked like me.  
  
I open the door. I accept.  
  
Perdita’s ghost does not pour over me. I do not feel her lips, so soft like an insect’s wing, against my wrist.   
  
“Angel?”  
  
I walk through to the living room. He is sitting on the couch. I can smell burnt spaghetti. I think I can smell his heart burning too. Its hissing pounding roaring beating fills my ears. I will be the Bringer. If I am not the Vessel, I will reap.  
  
“Angel.”  
  
He looks up and his mouth twists. “Couldn’t you have at least gotten dressed properly?”  
  
I realize my shirt is on inside out. “No more lies.”  
  
He seems to accept that. His eyes are two perfect cauldrons and I can see myself, reflected in them. “Were you with him?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Breath. “Were you in bed with him?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
He turns away. “Was it good?”  
  
I flinch. “Nothing is good.”  
  
“So you remember our daughter.”   
  
I pause for a moment and consider the cruelty of that remark. “What did it feel like when Cordelia kissed you, Angel?”  
  
“Like a second chance.”  
  
“Guess you weren’t third time lucky.” My knees feel wormy and rotten. “I guess I wasn’t enough.”  
  
“ _You_ were,” he whispers. “Buffy, _you_ were.”  
  
“What does that mean?”  
  
“I didn’t want the Slayer.”  
  
That old word. He keeps resurrecting things better left to the bones of Sunnydale. “You wanted her just fine when she was sixteen. What changed?”  
  
“Everything.”   
  
“Obviously not. You’re still vague-ing up elaborate concepts.”  
  
He smiles briefly and then catches it with his teeth. Whisper of Angelus. Always swaying on the brink of amusement. “I changed. You didn’t.”  
  
“Yes I did.”  
  
“Actually, you’re right.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You’re right. Seeing things made you old, Buffy. You lost that part of yourself that I—“  
  
“That you loved?” I finish for him. The back of my throat feels thick with hot salt.   
  
“No.” He is weary suddenly. “No. The part that I _craved_. The part that I _needed_.”  
  
“I won’t say I’m sorry for that.”  
  
“You shouldn’t be.” There’s the faint smile again. It looks like black spiders crawling across his face. Oh, Angelus. “It’s me. It’s been me forever.”  
  
“Everyone went away,” I murmur. “Everyone goes away. It’s all the same. I can’t help it. My Mom looked like wax. Spike burned my hand.” I hold it out and watch his eyes travel the map of scars. “Giles is rotting in England. Perdita…” my throat closes. I choke down swarmy vomit. “Wesley is there. He’s never gone. He’s never –“  
  
“He’s never died?” Angel looks angry. “Could I just remind you that I don’t remember getting to vote on that decision? You stuck a sword in me and waved Goodbye, Buffy.”  
  
For a moment I imagine that red wounds are gaping across my belly. “I didn’t wave.”  
  
“You killed me.”  
  
“So _what_ , then, Angel? Giving up on our daughter is some sort of punishment? Aren’t you a little late in the revenge game?”  
  
“I haven’t given up on her.” His breaths are tiny. “I just _know_.”  
  
“You know _what_?” I laugh. Stuttery, wheezing. “That Perdita’s dead? That she’s not on this earth anymore? I don’t think you can make that decision, Angel. I don’t think you can ever know. I do. I still feel her. She’s here. She’s waiting for me.”  
  
“Your goddamn _feelings_ ,” he turns suddenly and lashes out. His hand catches my wrist. “That life is over, Buffy. You’re not the Slayer anymore.”  
  
“Maybe not,” I whisper. “And you’re human.”  
  
“You hate that.”  
  
“That wasn't the part of you that I craved.”   
  
He flinches at the echo. “I hear you dreaming. Of him.”  
  
For a moment I just stare. “I don’t love Spike anymore. What we had is over.”  
  
“Not Spike.” My husband pauses. “Angelus.”  
  
I remember his snow breath and smirk and the hand slinking between my thighs as I pretended to sleep. The picture on the bed when the sun was ashes against the sky. It showed peaceful eyes closed slumber. Never ever that contorted frenzy mouth open howling to the moon that seemed alive –  
  
I shudder. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“I love you.”   
  
“I love you.”  
  
“But I have to leave.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
Angel reaches out but his palm never touches my cheek. “Goodbye, Buffy.”  
  
I don’t watch him. Perdita’s room welcomes me like arms. I feel Joyce clinging to my neck again and shake her off. No ghosts. I need to sleep, just a little. My body folds onto the bed and I smell peaches and bubbles. My little Perdy girl.   
  
Hard, gagging sobs build in the base of my throat. But I breathe out and out and out until there is nothing but oily darkness.  
  
I walk through the hallway of faces. I can smell the bleeding steak. My flesh is scored by the rows of teeth. I am afraid to fall. I know if I do, I will be eaten.  
  
“Perdy?” I call softly. It is a question. It always is.  
  
Gasping sounds in the corner. I see my daughter and run towards her, arms open, instinctive. Her dark hair falls around her cheeks. They are smooth. Blue thread stitches across her face. I stare, uncomprehending. Her mouth is sewn shut. She stares at me, beseechingly. _Mommy_?  
  
I am screaming, reaping and reaping.   
  
Dawn shakes me. We are on the platform. Electricity crackles and burns my nerves. It is as white as the arctic. My sister is tanned and beautiful in her velvet. Her pie-plate eyes swell with tears. “Buffy…” she whispers. “Buffy, no.”  
  
I push her into the crack between the worlds. She is swallowed with a _bzzpt_ , like a zipper.   
  
Looking down, I see Spike staring up at me. His face is warped with horror.  
  
“William.”  
  
Cold sweat bubbles along my heart as I awaken. The stars on Perdita’s ceiling glow a sickening yellow.   
  
I know, suddenly. I know everything.


	9. Chapter 9

I drive into the city of Angels with hands that look like spun sugar against the wheel. I’m shaking ever so slightly. My breasts feel damp and I touch my nipples with one finger. They are swollen and red and angry. Foreign teeth. Strange tongue. My wedding ring burns and burns.   
  
I’m reminded of the carnival suddenly. It worms its way out of a knot of memories all storming through my head. I pretend that I don’t like to remember because it hurts Angel. That’s a lie. I’m selfish. Little flashes of lightening brightness. The hall of mirrors. Sick smell of cotton candy. Every bit of me pounding with voiceless Slayer hell fury and I was going to _kill_ him. I truly thought I was. It was before Wesley. Before Perdy. Before the mask came off.   
  
Dawn’s eye was ringed with lead-black and the marks on her thighs were clotted. The lip of the fang bite near her pubic hair was ragged. I could hear Xander through the phone line. Screaming in Sarasota. He kept repeating one thing; “I’m going to fucking kill himI’m going to fucking kill himI’m going –“ Wes was listening with a detached calm I envied.   
  
My sister didn’t weep. She was raw and purple and her hair was like snakes down her back. Now, _now_ I know why she didn’t cry. She must have _liked_ it. She kept whispering, “He didn’t rape me. He only tried. He heard noises. He thought it was you.”   
  
“Where did he go?”  
  
She looked up at me with those eyes. I could drown in them. “He went where you gave him his first kiss. That’s what he said to tell you.”  
  
I felt cold. I imagined his cobra tongue deep in Dawn’s mouth. “Stay here. Wes, watch her.”  
  
He nodded. “Where are you going?”  
  
“To finish it.”  
  
I drove to the Santa Monica pier. It glittered like stupid confetti in the waning light. The carnival was ablaze. Fuzzy cartoon characters tried to hug me. I pushed them away in quick movements. I was wearing leather and my eyes were black holes in a starless galaxy. I felt like Buffy. I was going to kill him.  
  
Sometimes I worried about my purposefulness. Sometimes I worried about the rushing thrilling power before the kill. More often than not, I didn’t worry at all. That should have frightened me most of all.  
  
The funhouse was closed for the night. I knew he was there. Thousands of Buffys walked beside me. It felt as if they stretched and blurred into forever. I was walking through a tesseract and the rip in time would never end. The thought was comforting.   
  
He lit a cigarette behind me. The flare of the match.  
  
Already I could feel the hot blankness in my belly and I turned slowly.  
  
“Slayer,” he greeted me diffidently and took a long, graceful drag of the smoke.  
  
His shyness took me by surprise. Another game? I could see the faint crimson around his mouth.   
  
“I didn’t think you’d be back.”  
  
He shrugged. “LA’s a fun place. Especially when you’re around to lighten things up.”  
  
“I thought it was Dawn you were interested in.”  
  
“You’re always my main objective.” He paused and ash dripped off the end of the cigarette. “Jealous?”  
  
“Not especially,” I snapped coolly. “Since I know how she feels.”  
  
“The job wasn’t finished in either case. A shame.”  
  
“Why did you want to meet here?”   
  
He smirked suddenly. “This is where you gave him his first kiss.”   
  
“How does he know I remember?”  
  
“He always knew.”  
  
My breaths felt like balloons about to pop. “Where is he?”  
  
“Gone.”  
  
I wouldn’t cry. “How did you do this?”  
  
“Ye old black magic.”  
  
I pushed him back against a mirror. It creaked ominously.   
  
His hands touched my ass. We didn’t kiss. I knew I was hot, stinging inside. It seemed to go on for hours. Glass broke and broke and it felt like hissing paper cuts in my skin. I had to have surgery to get it out later. The doctor frowned at me and warned about “unusual sexual proclivities”. If only he knew. If only. Fucking monsters.   
  
“Leave my sister alone,” I panted against his neck.  
  
“I only wanted you.”  
  
I was surprised by the admission. I was surprised by the force ripping through me. I had wanted to know. Now I did.  
  
“I never forgot you,” I murmured in his ear. His snow breath felt like tiny icicles stabbing my breasts. “Angelus.”  
  
The memory saps me for a moment. I lean against the steering wheel. He didn’t see the spell coming. He never did. _Close your eyes_. He could never escape. I was always there, ready to pull him back from the brink.   
  
I wonder now, if it led Dawn to her doom. Tasting the cobra tongue in her mouth. Spike was a lizard, Angelus was a snake, but it would have been the same to her. Dead is dead and monsters are monsters.   
  
Especially when they are kindred.  
  
 _You become me_.  
  
Los Angeles is teeming with confusion. I drive down the street where I saw Spike. It takes ages to find parking. I squeeze between a Bentley and a pick-up. Such is California. I walk for a few hours before I see him. Checking my watch, I notice that it is 7:30. Dawn breaks in the east, orange light spilling over the sweltering smog.  
  
“William,” I murmur.  
  
He has a bag in his hands. The glint of silver. Knives.  
  
I follow him.


	10. Chapter 10

I follow the man with the pale as fish hands. William. Spike. My lover and my friend and my shade of grey. He is moving carefully, the bags in his hands jostled slightly by the crowds. They close around me, sweaty and comforting. I remember seeing the cuts across Dawn’s breasts. One was a red ribbon lacing her nipple. Her skin was colourless, like linen or paper or something equally without life. But I could see the cuts and hear the policeman saying, “Those weren’t caused by the crash. She got those through some other means.” His eyes were lascivious. Sex. She let strange fingers invade her body. She was like the girls in the porn shop. All blank eyes and open vaginas and if Perdy is dead, I’ll have to kill myself.  
  
Considering that thought, I think of my favourite poets. Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. Sisters in sorrow. Carbon monoxide choking lungs and how they put out milk for their children. But I am different. I still want to put out milk for Perdy. I still want to be her Mother. My hand grasps the sensitive fleshy part above my belly button. Joyce is there, in every tug.   
  
Spike spins on his heel and ducks down a side street between a sex store and a pizza place. I follow him into the alley, smelling the ashes and oranges of the gutter. My daughter holds my hand tight in her own. Every so often, her nails scrape my palms. I don’t look at her because I know the pink pants will be red and her clavicle will be poking through baby skin, but I _feel_ her. Her salty sweat and racing pulse and hurried steps.   
  
“I’m coming,” I whisper to the little ghost at my side. “I’ll find you.”  
  
When Spike opens a door deep in the recesses of the alley, I wait for a few seconds and then tread towards it. Dawn breaks just as I place my hand on the knob. Everything fades from orange to blue, and I breathe out, opening the door. It jerks a little, but I force it. I walk into a dark, cramped hallway. There is a photo framed on the wall.  
  
I step closer.  
  
My sister’s eyes stare back at me.  
  
They are ringed in black and there is a streak of blood across her lip. But she is laughing. Though the picture cuts off in ragged edges, I can tell she’s naked. The flesh of her neck is smooth and glistening with pearly liquid. I remember the taste of Spike’s come. He liked me to swallow and for hours afterward, I would imagine I could feel it burning and swirling in my belly.  
  
Hot, acrid vomit stings the back of my throat. I swallow, feeling it clinging to my teeth. Stepping into the next room, I falter and want to close my eyes  
  
I knew.  
  
Spike is sitting at his kitchen table, taking out the knives and laying them carefully on the pale blue surface. He whispers to himself. "Shallow cuts." Through the window in front of him, I can see the rising sun.   
  
Blocking it partially is Perdita.  
  
Her legs and arms are tied to posts driven through the wall and her small body is clothed in purple velvet. Dark brown bangs cover her eyes. From this distance, she looks like Dawn as a girl. I knew. I knew, but I didn’t want to believe it.  
  
“William.”  
  
Spike’s head jerks up. He turns slowly and I can see his neck bobbing a little, as if he is nodding uncontrollably. He starts to mutter. “Should’ve known. Should’ve known. You’d come to try and stop me, Slayer—“  
  
“I’m not going to _try_ ,” I say. “Why did you do this?”  
  
“She looks like Dawn.”  
  
“William.”  
  
“Stop _bloody_ calling me _that_ ,” he snarls. “It’s not my name, Slayer.”  
  
“Then what is?”  
  
He stops for a moment. “I got the knives.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I’m gonna finish it.”  
  
“Finish it?”  
  
“Finish what you fucked up.” He laughs a little and looks straight at me. His eyes glow ferally. “She was never the same, ya know. Never the same. A key without a lock is pretty damn useless, wouldn’t ya agree, Slayer?”  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
  
“Everything you did. You did it to her. Angelus. H only wanted you and she couldn’t be happy ever again. She liked me to _hurt_ her. Liked me to cut her with the knives and spin tales of electricity burning along her nerves. She liked me to bite her but I couldn’t—“ his mouth opens in little sobs. “I need to do this. It’s what she would have wanted. Sacrificial lamb. Need to fill the lock or Glorificus’ll never let her rest.”  
  
“What are you saying?” My whole body is itching. I measure the distance from me to my daughter. I measure the distance from me to the knives. I imagine pinning him to the wall like a butterfly caught in a net. “ _What_?”  
  
“DAWN,” he suddenly shouts. “I’M TALKING ‘BOUT DAWN!”  
  
Suddenly Perdita’s head snaps up. She was sleeping. Her hair falls in wings around her face. I see beautiful green eyes and a mouth covered by blue cloth. There is a brief moment of joy that flashes like sunlight as she takes me in. I am her _Mother_. She has been waiting for me. She knew I would come. My breaths come in hitching gasps and she is _real_ , oh my God, it’s _her_ and in that moment I’m able to get past my memories and _see_ her. My Perdy. No longer lost.   
  
“You know what Spike?” I say shakily as I rush forward. “For once? I don’t give a damn _what_ you’re talking about.” My voice softens. “Close your eyes, Perdita. Do as Mommy says. I’m taking you away, just please do this for me.”  
  
She is trembling but obeys me.  
  
I lean close to my lover, my friend, my shade of grey. The map of scars on my hand seems to hiss. He reaches up and tries to touch me.   
  
“I’m sorry about Dawn,” I murmur. “I loved her too. But you shouldn’t have taken my daughter, Spike. I have no choice.”  
  
“Always a choice,” he mumbles.  
  
“Not with her, William.” The stake comes out of my boot with practiced ease. My eyes are black holes in a starless galaxy. The mask has been off for a long time, but only now do I truly see.   
  
_I’m Buffy, the vampire Slayer, and you are?_  
  
The dust and ash coats my lips. My fingers undo the knots tying my daughter to the window like an animal staked for slaughter. She curls against my breast naturally, her face pressing into the hot crease of my neck. The gag is loose. I tear it free and clutch her against me; the smell of her, the satin of her hair and the little wet imprint her mouth leaves on my ear lobe. She whispers.  
  
“Mommy.”  
  
“Yes?” I have to lean against the wall. The sound of her voice. Silenced in my dreams. “Yes, Perdy?”  
  
“I didn’t like that man.”  
  
“Me either,” I agree. “But you’re safe now.”  
  
“You’re here,” she says, speaking very quickly. “You’re here and everything is ok. The man said you’d never come but I knew you would Mommy. I had dreams about you and I tried to tell you where I was. Did you see me?”  
  
Silent, hot tears slide down my face. “Yes. It just took me a while to find you. I’m sorry, Perdy. I’m sorry.”  
  
She pats the back of my head comfortingly. “I love you, Mommy. Please don’t cry.”  
  
She doesn’t know what I’m truly sorry for. Dawn. Angelus. Sleeping with Spike when I was stupid and young and suicidal and knew better. Loving Wes even though I hear Fred in every burning beat of his heart. Craving things I can never, should never have. For causing this tailspin. For how she will be haunted by this in years to come.  
  
“I love you too,” I say and begin to unbutton the purple velvet, aching to rid her of its stain. “It’s too hot today for this.”   
  
My watch says its 7:45. Los Angeles shines bright in the white morning. I wonder where Angel is and then smile down at my daughter, who throbs like a current of electricity in my arms.   
  
“Let’s find your Daddy, ok? Let’s go home.”

~Finis


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